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Loving a wife with all your heart

D&C 42: 22 says the following:

Thou shalt love thy wife with all thy heart

If that’s true, how does one then love his children?

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Kim Siever

Queer Mormon poet with radical political views. I have been married 27 years, and we have 6 children. Sunday school president. Served in the Utah Provo Mission.

7 thoughts on “Loving a wife with all your heart”

  1. hmmm… I would guess that it’s not intended to be read literally – especially since I don’t really think our physical hearts have a lot to do with loving someone anyway.

  2. The product of the couple, is half of the wife, and half of the husband, so the children are included in that commandment, without any problem or debate–the commandment, and obligation, to the husband continues through the children of that marriage, being the same commandment just the logical extension and fulfillment of it. No further commandment for the children is needed since they are part of her. Does Abinadi’s doctrinal exposition in Mosiah 15 have a similarity somehow to this?

  3. I guess the question is, is your heart more like a container or a tool?

    If I give you half of what is in my container, I’m only left with half for other things whereas if I swing the whole hammer on a nail, I’m free to use the whole hammer on every other nail I come across.

    If our hearts have a limited capacity, like a container, then it’s true; we’d have to moderate the rate at which we partition our love.

    I’d like to think that your heart, given this context, is a tool. When you love someone, don’t do it half-heartedly. Swing the whole hammer every time.

  5. The sun shines all its light, and the earth thereby is lit by that fullness, yet, it would be erroneous to view the sun as lighting the earth any less, or with less than its full light, if that selfsame light radiates or lights other planets, and moons, and bodies throughout the solar system, and even shines far out to be perceived as a star hundreds and thousands of light years away.

    A husband loving his wife with all his heart implicitly requires loving the children. For a husband to love his wife with all his heart but to fail to love the children would be a lie – for it would not therefore be with all his heart, for he failed in an essential component of that love.

    It would be less than with all his heart, for the implicit requirement in loving the wife means including the children.

    Perhaps viewing love as an action, rather than a feeling or reaction, best answers the question.

    Is a parent that is not loving the spouse with all their heart truly loving their children? Is there not a link? The parent who loves his children, will naturally love their mother – for the good of all. The husband who loves his wife, will love the children by extension – it is part of the equation.

    The result is incomplete without the full equation. All – the sum total – is not all, if essential parts of the equation are removed.

    To measure love like a bank account is a narrow and limited view. Light is probably a better medium with which to compare love.

  6. “Is a parent that is not loving the spouse with all their heart truly loving their children?”

    I’d recommend talking to a divorced couple to see if this statement holds true…

  7. Great discussion!!! A great book for married men is “How to Love You Wife” by Dr. John Buri. It changed my life!!

    Here’s the short description of the book: Some people have suggested that a successful marriage requires tremendous insight to understand and super-human effort to achieve. Others contend that happy marriages are the purview of a lucky few. In this ground-breaking book, How To Love Your Wife, it is revealed how thriving marriages can actually be achieved through sensible effort by reasonable people. But here’s the catch. Since the majority of marriages in this country consist of unions in which wives are more heavily invested in marital success than are their husbands, much of this sensible effort by reasonable people needs to be consistently initiated and maintained by men. In fact, men often hold the keys to bringing about the type of loving marriage they had hoped for when they first said “I do.” In How To Love Your Wife, these keys are made clear, understandable, and accessible.

    John Buri’s website: http://personal.stthomas.edu/jrburi/

    The book on amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Love-Your-Wife-John-Buri/dp/1598864858/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1216440988&sr=8-1

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